I want to regear my truck. 2002 ram QC 5.9. I am decenctly mechanicly inclined I can usaully do must jobs myself. but i was wondering how many hours and what special tools would be required to do front and rear gears?

 

More tools and know how than most people possess. A dial indicator at minimum, and some gear blue. You have to get the backlash right or goodbye gears. I don't have location or setup, so I would take it somewhere.

 

I have spent most of my life working on vehicles but I would HIGHLY recommend taking this to someone who knows what they are doing and can PROVE their experience with rearends. My truck is now in the shop again because the original "mechanic" - and I use the term loosely - screwed up the install. In fact the ring gear was a little too large for the housing so he just stuck it in there and let it cut it's own groove instead of taking a grinder to the inside of the housing and removing some of the housing material. Because of this, the backlash was way off, teh pinion gear went bad from where it had been beat on and was not in alignment and the crush sleeve had not been crushed which indicates improper torque specs. Fortunately I got it back in the shop in time so there was no major damage to anything. My truck is driven only about once or twice a week and trust me, you could tell something was wrong by the way it chattered and vibrated at about 70 mph which was improperly attributed to an unbalanced drive shaft. A driveshaft check about 1 week ago told me to look elsewhere. Glad I did.

Some Transmission shops can do the job or will at least tell you where to go since they are always working in these areas of vehicles. This is becoming an expensive lesson for me. I hope your install goes better than mine.

 

do your self a favor and take it in. I have a friend who works for a shops that builds rock crawlers and custom 4 wheeling parts and custom axles and he can install gears and lockers and all that but he said he hates to do it because if he does one thing wrong the gears can grenade driving down the road. I had a friend blow up his rear ring and pinion gears on his lifted toyota going 65 and he flipped his truck, having your rear end lock up at those speeds is not safe. It doesnt cost much to have them installed so just take it somewhere so you don't mess anything up.

 

sounds good guys will definatly take it to a shop. thanks for the input.